24 ms·

Why do we have allergies?

272 points by ph0rque 10y ago

dahart 10y ago
"sepsis. It is thought to strike around a million people a year in the USA alone, up to half of whom die." Holy crap, really? I looked it up and yeah, it's true. I had no idea sepsis killed that many people.
ph0rque 10y ago
Here's a summary if you're in a hurry: "Why do we get allergies? No one has a firm answer, but what is arguably the leading theory suggests that allergies are a misfiring of a defense against parasitic worms. In the industrialized world, where such infections are rare, this system reacts in an exaggerated fashion to harmless targets, making us miserable in the process. Medzhitov thinks that’s wrong. Allergies are not simply a biological blunder. Instead, they’re an essential defense against noxious chemicals–a defence that has served our ancestors for tens of millions of years and continues to do so today."
- xufi 10y ago
  Interesting thanks. This definetly reminds me also of how your eye lashes/eyebrows are a defense against dirt and particles that have also served our ancestors for millions of years
- ams6110 10y ago
  Long articles are not bad in the right context, but when publishing online authors need to get to the point right away. They should make their main case in the opening paragraph or two, and then fill in the details. The whole opening anecdote about kicking the hornet nest was useless and should be eliminated.
  - snookca 10y ago
    Not sure why publishing online necessitates getting to the point. It's long form and follows a very common story telling format. The world has room for different ways to tell a story.
  - wmeredith 10y ago
    This is journalism 101. Inverted triangle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid
  - msl09 10y ago
    I want to take a moment to ask my fellow non-americans, do you also hate the american style of storytelling in news articles? It's obnoxious, useless and recently, counter productive because we are overloaded with information and need to skim quickly over many different news.
    - kristiandupont 10y ago
      ..it doesn't strike me as particularly American? I could easily see a Danish article written in this style. I don't dislike it but I do agree that the point should be at the top. Trying to build a crescendo seems to build on the assumption that your reader is fascinated by your writing already. It might be true if you have a following. Maybe this author does, I am not sure.
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      Not sure it makes sense to say this is American vs non-American. Normal American newspaper stories adhere pretty well to the inverted pyramid structure, and the wiki article even suggests it first became prominent in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid It's really about news vs. human interest pieces, and many outlets (like the NY Times) feature both. Seems possible to me that American outlets produce more of these, but it'd be hard to disentangle this from the general dominance of American outlets on the English-speaking internet, such that non-American pieces are more likely to be directly local and, so, news rather than human interest.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    The solution to this problem is well known: an abstract. It's clear that many news outlets see their job as entertainment rather than delivery of information, and it's also clear from comment's like snookca's that some people like this. (I hate it, but to each his own.) So this is never going to be solved by complaining to the author or to your fellow readers. What could effectively solve this is if HN attached a short abstract to each article, written and updated by user submission. (The initial version could/should be provided by the submitter.) Maybe minimal GitHub-like version control with pull requests accepted by vote. This could be useful not just to save time, but also to keep article quality higher, if submitters are required to justify the intellectual value of the submission. The abstract would be more valuable than normal comments, so accepted modifications could get extra karma. This would have similarities to summaries on slashdot (which are written by moderators and so not very scalable) and the "submission statement" required in certain subreddits. https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/3yh1ll/introducing_submission_statements_for_news_and/?sort=new https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/3yh1ll/introdu... https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1p4gqg/new_policy_for_truereddit_submission_statements/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1p4gqg/new_poli...
    - WalterSear 10y ago
      After a few minutes of that article, I scrolled to the bottom and read the paragraphs in reverse order until I got to the actual point. :)
      - alexandercrohde 10y ago
        I do this too with these types of articles. So much fluff. A real problem in my opinion.
  - mattlutze 10y ago
    The author simply used a rhetorical approach for having an extended conversation about a scientific topic with laymen. Long-form science writing isn't inferior to news briefs or press release-style articles you're looking for; it can be a very effective method for engaging a reader and introducing them to a topic which they don't have detailed knowledge on (or which they just want to read about).
  - fixermark 10y ago
    Recently learned about the 3-30-300 rule of article writing online: "People will read 3 words to decide if the topic is interesting. If they think it's worth their time, you have thirty words to hook them. If they take the hook, you can probably get them to read 300 words unless they have a focused interest in the topic." It is, unfortunately, tied to much evil online (the quick-list ad blog ecosystem is basically application of 3-30-300 writ large), but useful for creating general-consumption articles.
    - stcredzero 10y ago
      This is why we'll go extinct. We don't have brains that can handle concepts that take 5 sentences to accurately summarize.
      - dsego 10y ago
        Nope, this is why we thrive.
        stcredzero 10y ago
        One can thrive in the short term, but still go extinct in the long term.
  - waylandsmithers 10y ago
    Well, it's really a feature about Medzhitov when you were expecting the typical "A New study says!" type of article.
- zeotroph 10y ago
  and originally (CC licensed, and attributed) with a few nice illustrations from http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-do-we-have-allergies http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-do-we-have-allergies where they even credit a `Fact checker`. And on first glance, that website seems quite good.
- LionessLover 10y ago
  Well... time for anecdotal sample-of-1 "science": About two decades ago I got a huge case of almost-asthma pollen allergy out of nowhere, almost overnight. I got the usual treatment (desensitization + meds) and it got somewhat better over the years. Simultaneously I developed other allergies though, for example, suddenly I was very allergic to cats (I had had cats earlier, so that was new). A few years ago I was diagnosed with a case of chronic heavy-metal poisoning. Now, many treatments with DMPS (the main chelator for mercury) and DMSA later, I have completely lost all allergies (and a long list of other "strange" problems, including a real medical miracle that left the endocrinologist repeating "I'm amazed" over and over after checking his ultrasound results twice, after asking me to lie down again because he did not trust his results). End of anecdote. ------------------------------ EDIT: As someone who has taken hundreds of hours of anatomy, physiology, org. chem, statistics (focus on public health and use in medicine), neuroscience, I am aware that there is not "one path that explains all". There are soooooo many pathways, and different things can affect different parts leading to similar results. So I am NOT saying "this is the one and only way to get an allergy". In fact it is highly unlikely that there is only one possible cause. So if you have found an anecdote that seems to show that something else helped and/or caused it than "heavy metals" that's just fine and normal - and has nothing to do with my anecdote. You can get a flesh wound not just by cutting yourself with a kitchen knife, there are endless possibilities.
  - cylinder 10y ago
    What is the best test and type of specialist to determine if you have metal poisoning? I'm glad you are feeling better.
  - xenophonf 10y ago
    I vaguely recall reading something on Usenet or something that would have made it onto Slashdot or Plastic in the late 90s/early 00s, where someone treated their allergies or asthma or something by deliberately infecting themselves with a parasitic worm---I forget which, maybe hookworm. They actually went to so far as to cultivate the worm in some medium that they could apply to their stomach using a custom-made patch, started pooping oocytes, and then completed the usual treatment course for whatever it was they infected themselves with. I can't recall if it cleared up the condition from which they were suffering, and obviously, this wasn't any kind of controlled trial. Lord knows that such a study would give an IRB six fits, and rightly so!
- raldi 10y ago
  Thanks. I know you didn't write the headline, but it would've been less clickbaity as, "New theory suggests allergies are caused by an essential toxin defense".
- seanalltogether 10y ago
  I found the experiment further down to explain the theory even better. > Some of the mice are ordinary, but others are not: using genetic engineering techniques, Medzhitov’s team has removed the animals’ ability to make IgE. They can’t get allergies. > The animals may be spared the misery of hay fever caused by the ragweed pollen that will inevitably drift into their box on currents of air. But Medzhitov predicts they will be worse off for it. Unable to fight the pollen and other allergens, they will let these toxic molecules pass into their bodies, where they will damage organs and tissues. > “It’s never been done before, so we don’t know what the consequences will be,” says Medzhitov. But if his theory is right, the experiment will reveal the invisible shield that allergies provide us.
  - Cthulhu_ 10y ago
    It's a shame the article doesn't have the info on what happens without the allergy response, it needs a follow-up on that one.
    - smithkl42 10y ago
      Agreed. It really left me wondering, "Am I hurting myself by taking all that Claritin and NasalCort and NasalCrom and all those other anti-allergy meds that have made life livable again?"
- Nilzor 10y ago
  Does he elaborate on what kind of noxious chemicals, and how that explains why allergy has been on the rise in the 20th century? (I skimmed the article but couldn't find it)
  - VLM 10y ago
    chems: No. He makes the semi-funny mistake of listing "gold allergy" and nickel allergy as if they're separate. Nickel is a component of low purity gold and that's why people who are allergic to nickel are allergic to low purity gold. The gold atoms are quite blameless, they're just in a bad neighborhood. Kinda like the gluten free guy isn't allergic to 100 individual types of pasta, he's actually allergic to one specific wheat protein, that happens to be in 100 pastas and breads and beer and who knows what else. Why: Kinda. Paraphrasing the article its a mishmash of the establishment view is it was an evolutionary adaptation that was a net gain until recent civil engineering, and now is a net loss. The mash of the mish is fairly standard inflammation and chronic exposure to a very large and complicated semi-autonomous set of analog systems combined with very close monitoring of a very large populations means all the weird system crashes where balances go haywire will be documented. So something like eating a peanut in 1700 was OK because your fish diet was clean and the person who died from a peanut was not noticed compared to the bodies stacked like cordwood due to cholera and typhoid and the plague and lack of clean water in general and intestinal parasites and food poisoning. But in 2016 dude eats a fish diet which is contaminated by mercury from coal burning power plants and that combined with low level exposure to a zillion things simultaneously that we know are bad at high level which means his immune system is perma-inflamed into being half way to blowing up all the time, and when he eats a peanut and dies people notice because in 2016, at least in the west, civil engineering means people are not dying of plagues all the time, so it gets documented and wondered about. Some aspects of the article are not controversial. Consider the accepted establishment theory of epoxy, urethane, or polyester monomer sensitization. The controversy is you have an enormously large complicated system (like physics, or the entire immune system vs the entire planetary industrial era environment) and fans of various gross simplifications and rules of thumb love to argue about which is righter than the other and the borders of acceptable application of those simplifications.
- Yhippa 10y ago
  I humbly request "ph0rque as a Service" for all longform articles on the Internet. I read through 60% of this thing and couldn't fully put together what it was about.
  - ph0rque 10y ago
    You flatter me! I humbly suggest a learning algorithm might be a better summarizing service. I've noticed some bots on reddit trying to summarize articles.
- sosborn 10y ago
  > In the industrialized world, where such infections are rare, this system reacts in an exaggerated fashion to harmless targets, making us miserable in the process. Are you talking about the TSA?
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  > Allergies are not simply a biological blunder. Instead, they’re an essential defense against noxious chemicals–a defence that has served our ancestors for tens of millions of years and continues to do so today. It sounds like they're still a blunder of some sort though, I somehow doubt that people allergic to tree pollen in the spring would actually be harmed if they lost their allergic reaction. I mean, we actually have that, in the form of allergy shots/sublinguals that make people lose that reaction, and those people are fine.
  - jeffdavis 10y ago
    More to the point: if a few molecules of something cause your body to asphyxiate itself, it's hard not to call that a biological blunder. Maybe there's more to the story, but it's not a matter-of-fact simple defense against peanuts.
- kpil 10y ago
  There seems to be other theories similar to this, saying that our immune systems are subjected to too few pathogens in general, not just worms - due to the cleanliness of 'modern' life. There might even be some correlation to increased rates of allergy in countries that raised the living standard and less allergies among farmers (supposedly because they roll around in pigs shit? The reasoning is a bit unclear.) But I can't shake the feeling that there is something wrong with that theory. If you disregard large cities, 150 years ago, most people met very few people. Travelling was complicated and slow. Diseases was spreading of course, but decidedly in a slower pace than today - in most parts of the world. I'm fairly sure that an average person 150 years ago came in contact with less people in a year than I pass by on my daily commute. Heck, the building I work in has 3500 people in it, my kids go to three different schools with a couple of hundred other kids in each and their parents most likely works in other large workplaces, and I eat at restaurants that serves hundreds of meals every day. Is it not possible that an average person today are subjected to many -more- strains and variants of pathogens than ever. Maybe it is the increased load of _different_ pathogens that stresses the immune system? I mean, even if I moved in into the pigsty for good, it's just me and the pig there... The only way to catch a new disease would be from birds and rats, or a random mutation.
Aelinsaar 10y ago
I think the "It's a blunder" view is simplistic, but so is, "It's wonderfully adaptive!" I think like the sensation of pain, or itch, it can be both. When it's working well, in moderation, and your environment is stable, you're going to be ok. If one of those elements goes awry, then bang. Being slightly allergic to something noxious makes sense, but being violently, potentially fatally allergic to a foodstuff? No...
nxzero 10y ago
Reminds me how if you ask someone why something is and they lack the knowledge to know why, they'll still try to give an answer based on what they do know. We may never know why people have allergies.
aaron695 10y ago
Not sure is this article mentioned it, but from another one "As for why allergies are seemingly on the rise, this work does nothing to dispel or support the so-called hygiene hypothesis, which links allergies to modern hyperclean environments. With the advent of clean water and childhoods devoid of consuming much dirt (and the millions of bacteria and viruses that come with them) the immune system does not receive the early training it needs to function correctly, the hypothesis says. A healthy exposure to those invaders leads the body to invest more in type 1 responses, including strong microbe defense, rather than type 2 reactions such as allergies."
- lordnacho 10y ago
  Sounds like an opening for a new type of vaccine?
  - criddell 10y ago
    Can a doctor write a prescription to allow a kid to play in the mud?
    - lordnacho 10y ago
      I've heard of doctors telling people to drink Guinness.
      - criddell 10y ago
        Ah right. I forgot that someone with a PhD in history is also a doctor.
- zbjornson 10y ago
  This part wasn't totally clear, but I think he's actually proposing that we're now launching allergic responses to harmful chemicals present in our Westernized indoor environments (wayyy down the article). If that's what he indeed means, then it goes against the hyperclean theory.
robertelder 10y ago
Here is a fairly recent and interesting documentary on allergies: http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episodes/the-allergy-fix http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episodes/the-allergy-fix Parasitic worms, and their modulation of the immune system (and the possible faulty human over-compensation for this) are one of a few different theories that are put forward. I thought I would link it here because it's fairly informative.
lossolo 10y ago
I do not have any allergies, i was born in summer and was on fresh air a lot. I have friends that were born in summer also but they were in house mostly and those that were born in winter and they both have allergies. Lately i have read scientific paper about statistically bigger amount of people with allergies that didn't born in summer. So make your kid touch the mud and ground, make it breath the air as much as he can while he is little. It's all about environment and contact with it.. IF the kid is under "parents bubble" when he is young it's not healthy for it. Link: https://theconversation.com/your-season-of-birth-is-stamped-on-your-dna-and-can-affect-your-risk-of-allergies-56751 https://theconversation.com/your-season-of-birth-is-stamped-...
- 1_player 10y ago
  You're probably being downvoted (I did upvote by mistake...) because the theory that being born in summer helps with allergies smells like BS. One thing I agree with, though, with no other data point than my experience, is that being in contact with allergens at a young age helps, or conversely that kids raised in sterile environments are more prone to allergies and have a weaker immune system. I'm born in winter, my siblings as well, we were raised in the country, had dogs/cats, didn't live in a very clean house and haven't found anything we're allergic to and get very rarely sick. But yeah, N=1
  - jrapdx3 10y ago
    I can see why you might say it "smells like BS", but it's not entirely implausible. The parent referred to 2 elements: summertime birth, and "playing in the mud", both contrasted to being confined to indoor environment. "Born in summer" implies greater exposure to sunlight (in northerly latitudes) vs. winter birth. Sunlight induces vitamin D formation in the skin. Vitamin D is implicated in normal immune system development so low D levels in infancy could conceivably be a factor in later development of allergies, etc. "Playing in mud" suggests contact with organisms present in the natural environment. Deprivation of this exposure has been discussed (here on HN a few days ago) as the "old friends hypothesis". Basically the idea is that through evolution our immune system "outsourced" certain functions to co-evolving microorganisms. When contact with these "friends" is lacking our immune systems are compromised and abnormal hypersensitivities develop.
libeclipse 10y ago
How does this explain why only some people are affected by allergies. If it's a defensive mechanism, shouldn't we all have it?
- jernfrost 10y ago
  From my scanning of the article my understanding is that we all have it. The difference is our magnitude of response. One made animals with no allergic reaction whatsoever and predicted that these would suffer other problems over time.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Allergy symptoms can just be poor mediation of the defensive response.
- PeterisP 10y ago
  We all have this defensive mechanism, however, when it misfires (triggers in a situation where the response isn't necessary) then we call it an allergy.
  - libeclipse 10y ago
    That's not what the article suggests. It suggests that allergies are not a misfiring but rather a real and proper defense against the allergens.
- danharaj 10y ago
  The same reason why we aren't clones of our parents.
- fuzzfactor 10y ago
  There is always the possibility that some of our ancestors spent thousands of years so far north that they didn't have significant pollen & pollinating insects, or fruits, vegetables, legumes and the kinds of irritating things most other cultures evolved in harmony with during recent millennia. Always did seem normal to be irritated by irritants, with some people more irritated than others by different things. Seems like each person can only handle a certain amount of total irritants before they experience discomfort. I remember intentionally overcoming an allergy to cats. Researchers have since indicated that the suspected irritant is the cat's saliva rather than just the hair itself. Regardless, it was not unexpected to become more sensitive to less-often-encountered things completely unrelated to animal hair or saliva as a tradeoff after reducing the feline sensitivity.
venomsnake 10y ago
I grew up in Eastern Europe (born in the early 80s). In my cohort hay fever allergies are extremely rare and food ones are unheard of. In the recent generations there are definitely more of them. EE was notoriously lax with pollution and industrial waste. So I think that toxins are not to be blamed. The sterility hypothesis seems like a better explanation.
- LionessLover 10y ago
  That would depend on the kind of toxins, not just "toxins". Also, nothing works in isolation: Maybe living in the East (I'm from the East too) had other - mitigating - advantages. Whet we are looking at is what to an account would be just the final "net income" number - but behind 10 cents there can be a multibillion dollar business or a teenager who spent most of his/her pocket money. So I don't think it can be decided so easily. Do you think the people thinking about this are not aware of global statistics and did not consider simple explanations?
- babuskov 10y ago
  I don't know about food allergies, but for hay fever I think the allergies were there before - people weren't educated enough to recognize the symptoms. My father (born in 1948) got fed with anti-biotics for the first 40 years of his life until one day he was lucky enough that a new local physician arrived who had allergy problems himself and changed the therapy. I was born in 1977, and also remember all the anti-biotics injections I got as a child until they finally tested me for allergies at the age of 12. I'd say the majority of medical doctors in this area got aware on allergies in early 90's.
- scotty79 10y ago
  EE back then had very few cars so probably air pollution wasn't as bad as in modern EE cities.
2skep 10y ago
This article is a very good example of the genre of science reporting I find very uninteresting and even boring. The way the writer builds up to the punch line by weaving in his own life and by overemphasiaing the trope of the 'maverick scientist challenging group think' is so contrived that it probably wrote itself. Maybe I am different that I want to read science articles to learn new things and not to be entertained. The writer proves how hard it is to do both.
- wmeredith 10y ago
  I read pieces like this and I can't help but think that the writer is creating prose, and I want reporting. one of us is in the wrong place.
- pantulis 10y ago
  The article is basically unreadable in today's attention economy.
- allengeorge 10y ago
  Let me counter: I found the article very readable, engaging and informative. There's a lot of context in there that the top-rated summary above misses (who the researcher is, and what he's worked on, how allergy theories have changed over the years...) It would have helped to have an abstract, but that's not a failure of the article itself.
csours 10y ago
After all the build-up, this guy's theory doesn't sound new at all... Am I missing something?
- antisthenes 10y ago
  Not at all. I've heard this exact theory from relatives back in the 90's when I asked them why people get allergies (as a kid).
jernfrost 10y ago
Ok, I scanned through quickly, but here is the conclusions as far as I can tell. Allergies has an important function. The problem is the severity of it. A weak allergic reaction is what protects us from toxins, viruses etc, however for some reason the system goes in overdrive in some people and that is not good. It might seem like there is no significant difference between this an previous understanding. But the significance as far as I can tell is that previously we thought all allergic reactions no matter how small was useless and wrong by the body. The idea was that any allergic reaction is a misfiring, while this idea suggests it isn't firing which is the problem it is the magnitude which is the problem.
- rglullis 10y ago
  From TFA: But understanding the purpose of allergies could lead to dramatic changes in how they’re treated. “One implication of our view is that any attempt to completely block allergic defences would be a bad idea,” he said. Instead, allergists should be learning why a minority of people turn a protective response into a hypersensitive one. “It’s the same as with pain,” said Medzhitov. “No pain at all is deadly; normal pain is good; too much pain is bad.”
nathan_long 10y ago
Skipping. I'm basically done reading controversial new medical theories and things that "a new study suggests." I'm not a researcher. Wait until the finding has been confirmed in lots of studies and is Boring Standard Medical Knowledge, then tell me. Until then, it's just going to give me the illusion of knowledge. There's so much "MAYBE eating kelp will reduce your risk of LUPUS!" that we lose sight of "I should really exercise more."
- nkrisc 10y ago
  That's not at all what this is. It introduces another theory and explains the thinking behind it. At no point does it state any sort of bunk, "do X to fix Y."
- 55555 10y ago
  As someone who has literally done the treatment the article discusses, I think your prescription is best. I used to read all the cutting-edge research but now I try to mostly ignore headlines and research.
barkbro 10y ago
This would explain contact alleries to for example nickel and various chemicals, which are usually quite harmful, but I don't see how this would explain pollen and animal allergies. A lot of the pollens that cause allergy in some people are coming from harmless plants. And with pollen spreading in the wind, it would be an annoyance without necessarily protecting people much against coming in contact with the plants. Would avoiding contact with certain animals be beneficial? Other than avoiding pathogens, I don't see a lot of reasons to do so. Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if allergy, like many things in biology, are caused by multiple factors instead of just one.
- fixermark 10y ago
  If I'm understanding correctly, the overall hypothesis is that the allergy response is triggered by exposure to other toxins at low levels that prime the immune system to respond to the toxin, but the priming is inaccurate; the histamine-generating machinery does a quick-and-dirty approximation of the chemical that triggered the cellular damage, and while rounding up whatever industrial monomer irritated your nasal passages, it also snags the molecular tags of surrounding pollen and other common chemicals. As a side-effect, the system gets primed against the actual threat but also primed against benign foreign chemicals as well. The change in the ecosystem that has caused this defense mechanism to become a hindrance is the introduction of novel chemicals to our daily lives that trip low levels of immuno-response (or increase in chronic exposure to those chemicals due to a general shift to indoor living, where the chemicals just sit in the environment and bathe us in them), providing the opportunity for the immune system to sensitize to frequenltly-contacted benign chemicals.
chrisbennet 10y ago
Here's another example of science publication/publisher's drag on science (the paper that changed his life cost several months of his stipend): "As Medzhitov searched for papers on this subject, he came across references to a 1989 essay written by Charles Janeway, an immunologist at Yale, titled “Approaching the Asymptote? Evolution and revolution in immunology.” Medzhitov was intrigued and used several months’ of his stipend to buy a reprint of the paper. It was worth the wait, because the paper exposed him to Janeway’s theories, and those theories would change his life."
- nycticorax 10y ago
  That was in the early 90's, when most papers were still distributed as, well, paper. Back then, someone had to build and run an actual printing press.
sophacles 10y ago
Perhaps someone here is more versed in the field and can help me understand something... It seems like the "parasite" theory is a more specific example of the "fast reaction to toxins" theory being presented. Are there bigger differences that I'm not understanding, or is the resistance to the idea just that the new theory is overgeneralizing?
tmaly 10y ago
I found out about my daughters egg allergy while traveling abroad. I have my own suspicion that it was the result of her having antibiotics when she was a baby. A blocked tear duct was causing an infection in her eye. Her pediatrician prescribed antibiotics. When we eventually were able to get an appointment with an eye specialist, she recommended just wiping the eye out with mild soap. I have seen a few articles posted on HN that talked about the lack of gut bacteria ( killed by antibiotics ) as the reason why children develop allergies.
- Cthulhu_ 10y ago
  I've read other ones about the lack of breastfeeding at a young age; that might actually also be related to the development of gut bacteria. Now I wonder if breast milk is sterile or not (or contains spores); pretty sure formula milk is / should be.
- outworlder 10y ago
  Could be. As a counterpoint, I've had a lot of antibiotics early in life. The kind that caused tooth damage (most of my dental fillings are form that). Not as young, though. I had asthma triggered by dust, very frequently. We had an inhaler at home plus asthma medications. My brother and sister had the same issue, but they had no antibiotics prior to their symptoms. As adults, we have no known allergies. Your antibiotics are probably unrelated. Also, if the gut was severely affected by the antibiotics prescribed for the eye condition, you should have seen major gastrointestinal problems. Did you?
jerryhuang100 10y ago
The view of hypersensitive allergic reactions as a hypersensitive home alarm system is very similar to the view in Chinese traditional medicine. In CT medicine, to fundamentally treat constitutions of such hypersensitive conditions, the treatment is more focus on long-term tuning / taming immune system, rather than just blocking the allergic defenses.
Nomentatus 10y ago
This isn't controversial at this point, it's becoming the consensus, and it isn't news. But it gives me a chance to say: if you have real "allergy" problems but test negative for histamine/IgE allergies, say on a skin test; look into MCAS. Fair warning, your allergist may very well never have heard of it - doctors are rarely paid to read. MCAS = Mast Cell Activation Syndrome MCAD (Mast Cell Activation Disorder) = MCAS or mastocytosis Great links here: http://strengthflexibilityhealtheds.com/2016/02/04/diagnosing-mast-cell-activation-syndrome-mcas-update-and-diagnosis-confirmation/ http://strengthflexibilityhealtheds.com/2016/02/04/diagnosin... http://www.mastattack.org/2014/10/mcad-general-information-public/ http://www.mastattack.org/2014/10/mcad-general-information-p... http://evilmastcells.com/ http://evilmastcells.com/ http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(14)02927-3/fulltext http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(14)02927-3/full... Dr. Anne Maitland’s presentation on Allergies & Mast Cell Activation Syndrome in EDS Patients. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktFdr-9rpIM&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktFdr-9rpIM&feature=youtu.be https://mastcellblog.wordpress.com/mastcellguide/ https://mastcellblog.wordpress.com/mastcellguide/
- ejstronge 10y ago
  Mastocytosis is exceedingly rare - an article in NEJM (one of the authoritative medical journals) estimates that 1 in 100,000 people have been diagnosed with the disease. If your primary care physician has 2,000 patients (not unreasonable), s/he could reasonably expect to never encounter the disorder outside of a textbook. Just as in programming, doctors avoid the 'premature optimization' - no need to test for a rare disorder until considerably more common ones, like allergies, are ruled out.
zbjornson 10y ago
For a comparatively concise viewpoint straight from Medzhitov's group, including much more context and scientific support, see: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(12)00820-2 http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(12)0... (free) This also spends more time discussing what only appears in the last few paragraphs above the "*" in the OP, regarding Westernization efects and what I think are the more controversial aspects.
hellbanner 10y ago
If you think you may have parasites, check out http://humaworm.com http://humaworm.com and the related herb remedies
- rhexs 10y ago
  If you think you may have parasites, perhaps consider going to a real doctor.
  - ArtDev 10y ago
    Its a funny thing but the "natural" remedy can actually work better. I put natural in quotations because its super toxic! Wormwood/nutmeg/Black Walnut. Nasty stuff. Its good as a last resort if the conventional stuff does not kill the parasites This is what happened to me.
    - askldfhjkasfhd 10y ago
      I would argue that ingesting something that's super toxic is not a better solution, and is part of the reason why naturopathic remedies are not a good idea to self-appy.
      - hellbanner 10y ago
        "Antibiotics" literally translates to anti-living, if my language knowledge is correct..
    - hellbanner 10y ago
      Thanks for sharing. I put links to a few university research in the above post hoping the parent can see from a "real" perspective.
  - hellbanner 10y ago
    http://www.uofmhealth.org/health-library/hn-2187003 http://www.uofmhealth.org/health-library/hn-2187003 "The juice of freshly macerated unripe hulls of the black walnut (Juglans nigra) has been used for many years in folk medicine as a treatment for localized, topical fungal infections such as ringworm." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ptr.2650040104/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ptr.2650040104/ab... "Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans Houtt.) is the seed kernel of inside the fruit. It has been studied to having number of ethnopharmacological properties. Essential oils are secondary metabolites which originated from different parts of plants and made up of volatile compounds. In the present study, the essential oil extracted from nutmeg was investigated for its in vitro cytotoxicity on Vero cell line (normal cell line) and anti-parasitic activity against Toxoplasma gondii parasite. Nutmeg essential oil showed very low cytotoxic activity against Vero cells with IC 50 value of 24.83µg/mL. In the in vitro anti-T.gondii assay, the oil extract showed significant inhibiting activity with EC 50 value of 24.45µg/mL. This result was comparable to the standard drug clindamycin (EC 50 =16.57µg/mL.). Based on the promising results, nutmeg essential oil may be further studied for its mechanism of action against T.gondii and to isolate the bioactive compound(s) to treat toxoplasmosis." https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236031031_Anti-Parasitic_Activity_of_Myristica_Fragrans_Houtt_Essential_Oil_Against_Toxoplasma_Gondii_Parasite https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236031031_Anti-Para... -- I found these within 5 minutes of googling.
Jacksonb 10y ago
Good complimentary paper. "Impact of Pollen on Human Health: More Than Allergen Carriers?" https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/doc/1218587/1218587.pdf https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/doc/1218587/1218587.pdf
hackney 10y ago
It has been stated that kids who grow up in and around forested natural areas have better immune systems and are generally healthier for having grown up closer to the natural earth, as opposed to growing up in an asphalt jungle. Take poison oak for example. I have a relative whos drinking water flows through these plants and he is now immune to it. I brought a friend to his house (never been exposed) and after sitting on his couch, within 24 hours I had to take them to the hospital over the poison oak which had spread to the majority of their body. They were given a shot and we left shortly after that. Me? I've had allergies from a young age and actually had treatments for it. I remember laying on my stomache while the doctor pricked my back a bunch of times. I'll still sneeze around a bunch of pollen but not enough to prevent me from doing the work. In short, I do not think there is a fixall, take a pill solution and that there are many many factors to consider when treating someone for an allergy, or anything else for that matter. My grandma was hospitalized from inhaling bat dung, and my father also after eating some peanuts. Both could probably be treated to be less allergic but, this would require a lengthy treatment plan which is not a normal solution.
wyck 10y ago
They should do some research on tree pollen and why my body thinks trees are trying to kill me.
beefman 10y ago
Original source: http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-do-we-have-allergies http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-do-we-have-allergies
- dang 10y ago
  Ok, we changed to that from http://qz.com/689806/a-controversial-theory-may-explain-the-real-reason-humans-have-allergies/ http://qz.com/689806/a-controversial-theory-may-explain-the-....
bokglobule 10y ago
FWIW, I was able to clear up my spring time pollen allergies by not eating gluten. I was tested for celiac disease, but I do not have it thankfully. However, I decided to stop eating wheat in early 2015 for other reasons. I noticed that when spring came, I had almost no issues with pollen. I mentioned it to my internist and he said he wasn't surprised given the typical immune reaction to gluten. This year, another repeat performance. Almost no problems with pollen season. I had one or two episodes where I sneezed, but that was it. My area of the US is one of the highest allergy areas due to the density of foliage. As to why this has happened, I can only speculate. I suspect that it's mostly due to the fact that the wheat we eat in the U.S. isn't the same wheat we ate 40+ years ago- it's been genetically altered and there are NO long term studies on the affect of these GMOs on health - they haven't been available on the market long enough to really know. I haven't tried eating non-GMO wheat products so I can't say whether my theory is correct. For me, not eating wheat was the way to go for better health overall. But.. I do miss eating warm bread from the oven now and then.
- partiallypro 10y ago
  None of what you said is backed by science, and people had allergies long before GMO crops ever existed. There have been tons of studies on GMO crops, long term and short term effects and there has been no link between them and anything even as nuanced as allergies. Every time people speak out against GMO crops, they are following their own faith instead of science. Golden rice could have saved hundreds of thousands of people from death or malnutrition, but those people died because of people that spout this nonsense.
  - nashashmi 10y ago
    > None of what you said is backed by science, There is nothing out there to disprove what people fearfully claim either. The long term effects on a large were never tested, and it is being tested while in production. Unfortunately, there is no control case to compare against. >and people had allergies long before GMO crops ever existed. Sure there were people with allergies long before GMOs but they were in smaller numbers. There has been a growing trend of abnormalities and scientists cannot understand why. GMOs cannot be ruled out.
outworlder 10y ago
If allergies are protective, what happens to people who take anti-allergy medication? Say, during pollen season? Are they being harmed?
- scotty79 10y ago
  That would depend on whether those medications only reduce strong allergic reaction or reduce all allergic reactions, even small ones.
ArtDev 10y ago
I wonder if having worms as a kid (I was an expat kid in Nepal) provides some kind of protection against allergies as an adult? I have never had any allergies and I think this may be the reason (both my parents have seasonal allergies).
nkrisc 10y ago
I'm still left wondering what this means for the fact some people are allergic to things that others are not. Is it just genetics? My sister is allergic to penicillin, onions, and mushrooms while I'm not allergic to anything I've yet encountered. Did I just get lucky (or, maybe unlucky) and inherit different genes from our parents? Does environment play a role?
Pyxl101 10y ago
Do you know what part stood out the most to me? His difficulty getting access to scientific papers: > Graduate school wasn’t much better. Medzhitov arrived at Moscow State University just as the Soviet regime collapsed. The university was broke, and Medzhitov didn’t have the equipment he needed to run experiments. “I was basically spending all of my time reading and thinking,” Medzhitov told me. > Mostly, he thought about how our bodies perceive the outside world. We can recognise patterns of photons with our eyes and patterns of air vibrations with our ears. To Medzhitov, the immune system was another pattern recognition system – one that detected molecular signatures instead of light or sound. > As Medzhitov searched for papers on this subject, he came across references to a 1989 essay written by Charles Janeway, an immunologist at Yale, titled ‘Approaching the Asymptote? Evolution and revolution in immunology’. Medzhitov was intrigued and used several months’ of his stipend to buy a reprint of the paper. It was worth the wait, because the paper exposed him to Janeway’s theories, and those theories would change his life. Several months of stipend to buy a single paper?
pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
"we" don't have allergies. you ninny sissies who jump at shadows have allergies, because you are ninny sissies who jump at shadows.
unusximmortalis 10y ago
unless our health is damaged by an external factor (a hammer, a bigger hammer, you get the point) all diseases are internal reactions of our bodies (caused by outside or inside interactions) which unbalance our whole being and eventually can kill us if we do not restore the balance in timely manner.
gumby 10y ago
To me the most interesting part of allergies is not addressed by this article, except by referring to its absence: > Instead, allergists should be learning why a minority of people turn a protective response into a hypersensitive one. “It’s the same as with pain,” said Medzhitov. “No pain at all is deadly; normal pain is good; too much pain is bad.” It's clear that there's a process, presumably a good one, that sometimes goes haywire, and really that's all most people care about.

272 points by ph0rque 10y ago

"sepsis. It is thought to strike around a million people a year in the USA alone, up to half of whom die." Holy crap, really? I looked it up and yeah, it's true. I had no idea sepsis killed that many people.

ph0rque 10y ago

Here's a summary if you're in a hurry: "Why do we get allergies? No one has a firm answer, but what is arguably the leading theory suggests that allergies are a misfiring of a defense against parasitic worms. In the industrialized world, where such infections are rare, this system reacts in an exaggerated fashion to harmless targets, making us miserable in the process. Medzhitov thinks that’s wrong. Allergies are not simply a biological blunder. Instead, they’re an essential defense against noxious chemicals–a defence that has served our ancestors for tens of millions of years and continues to do so today."

xufi 10y ago
Interesting thanks. This definetly reminds me also of how your eye lashes/eyebrows are a defense against dirt and particles that have also served our ancestors for millions of years
ams6110 10y ago
Long articles are not bad in the right context, but when publishing online authors need to get to the point right away. They should make their main case in the opening paragraph or two, and then fill in the details. The whole opening anecdote about kicking the hornet nest was useless and should be eliminated.
- snookca 10y ago
  Not sure why publishing online necessitates getting to the point. It's long form and follows a very common story telling format. The world has room for different ways to tell a story.
- wmeredith 10y ago
  This is journalism 101. Inverted triangle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid
- msl09 10y ago
  I want to take a moment to ask my fellow non-americans, do you also hate the american style of storytelling in news articles? It's obnoxious, useless and recently, counter productive because we are overloaded with information and need to skim quickly over many different news.
  - kristiandupont 10y ago
    ..it doesn't strike me as particularly American? I could easily see a Danish article written in this style. I don't dislike it but I do agree that the point should be at the top. Trying to build a crescendo seems to build on the assumption that your reader is fascinated by your writing already. It might be true if you have a following. Maybe this author does, I am not sure.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    Not sure it makes sense to say this is American vs non-American. Normal American newspaper stories adhere pretty well to the inverted pyramid structure, and the wiki article even suggests it first became prominent in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid It's really about news vs. human interest pieces, and many outlets (like the NY Times) feature both. Seems possible to me that American outlets produce more of these, but it'd be hard to disentangle this from the general dominance of American outlets on the English-speaking internet, such that non-American pieces are more likely to be directly local and, so, news rather than human interest.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  The solution to this problem is well known: an abstract. It's clear that many news outlets see their job as entertainment rather than delivery of information, and it's also clear from comment's like snookca's that some people like this. (I hate it, but to each his own.) So this is never going to be solved by complaining to the author or to your fellow readers. What could effectively solve this is if HN attached a short abstract to each article, written and updated by user submission. (The initial version could/should be provided by the submitter.) Maybe minimal GitHub-like version control with pull requests accepted by vote. This could be useful not just to save time, but also to keep article quality higher, if submitters are required to justify the intellectual value of the submission. The abstract would be more valuable than normal comments, so accepted modifications could get extra karma. This would have similarities to summaries on slashdot (which are written by moderators and so not very scalable) and the "submission statement" required in certain subreddits. https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/3yh1ll/introducing_submission_statements_for_news_and/?sort=new https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/3yh1ll/introdu... https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1p4gqg/new_policy_for_truereddit_submission_statements/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1p4gqg/new_poli...
  - WalterSear 10y ago
    After a few minutes of that article, I scrolled to the bottom and read the paragraphs in reverse order until I got to the actual point. :)
    - alexandercrohde 10y ago
      I do this too with these types of articles. So much fluff. A real problem in my opinion.
- mattlutze 10y ago
  The author simply used a rhetorical approach for having an extended conversation about a scientific topic with laymen. Long-form science writing isn't inferior to news briefs or press release-style articles you're looking for; it can be a very effective method for engaging a reader and introducing them to a topic which they don't have detailed knowledge on (or which they just want to read about).
- fixermark 10y ago
  Recently learned about the 3-30-300 rule of article writing online: "People will read 3 words to decide if the topic is interesting. If they think it's worth their time, you have thirty words to hook them. If they take the hook, you can probably get them to read 300 words unless they have a focused interest in the topic." It is, unfortunately, tied to much evil online (the quick-list ad blog ecosystem is basically application of 3-30-300 writ large), but useful for creating general-consumption articles.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    This is why we'll go extinct. We don't have brains that can handle concepts that take 5 sentences to accurately summarize.
    - dsego 10y ago
      Nope, this is why we thrive.
      - stcredzero 10y ago
        One can thrive in the short term, but still go extinct in the long term.
- waylandsmithers 10y ago
  Well, it's really a feature about Medzhitov when you were expecting the typical "A New study says!" type of article.
zeotroph 10y ago
and originally (CC licensed, and attributed) with a few nice illustrations from http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-do-we-have-allergies http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-do-we-have-allergies where they even credit a `Fact checker`. And on first glance, that website seems quite good.
LionessLover 10y ago
Well... time for anecdotal sample-of-1 "science": About two decades ago I got a huge case of almost-asthma pollen allergy out of nowhere, almost overnight. I got the usual treatment (desensitization + meds) and it got somewhat better over the years. Simultaneously I developed other allergies though, for example, suddenly I was very allergic to cats (I had had cats earlier, so that was new). A few years ago I was diagnosed with a case of chronic heavy-metal poisoning. Now, many treatments with DMPS (the main chelator for mercury) and DMSA later, I have completely lost all allergies (and a long list of other "strange" problems, including a real medical miracle that left the endocrinologist repeating "I'm amazed" over and over after checking his ultrasound results twice, after asking me to lie down again because he did not trust his results). End of anecdote. ------------------------------ EDIT: As someone who has taken hundreds of hours of anatomy, physiology, org. chem, statistics (focus on public health and use in medicine), neuroscience, I am aware that there is not "one path that explains all". There are soooooo many pathways, and different things can affect different parts leading to similar results. So I am NOT saying "this is the one and only way to get an allergy". In fact it is highly unlikely that there is only one possible cause. So if you have found an anecdote that seems to show that something else helped and/or caused it than "heavy metals" that's just fine and normal - and has nothing to do with my anecdote. You can get a flesh wound not just by cutting yourself with a kitchen knife, there are endless possibilities.
- cylinder 10y ago
  What is the best test and type of specialist to determine if you have metal poisoning? I'm glad you are feeling better.
- xenophonf 10y ago
  I vaguely recall reading something on Usenet or something that would have made it onto Slashdot or Plastic in the late 90s/early 00s, where someone treated their allergies or asthma or something by deliberately infecting themselves with a parasitic worm---I forget which, maybe hookworm. They actually went to so far as to cultivate the worm in some medium that they could apply to their stomach using a custom-made patch, started pooping oocytes, and then completed the usual treatment course for whatever it was they infected themselves with. I can't recall if it cleared up the condition from which they were suffering, and obviously, this wasn't any kind of controlled trial. Lord knows that such a study would give an IRB six fits, and rightly so!
raldi 10y ago
Thanks. I know you didn't write the headline, but it would've been less clickbaity as, "New theory suggests allergies are caused by an essential toxin defense".
seanalltogether 10y ago
I found the experiment further down to explain the theory even better. > Some of the mice are ordinary, but others are not: using genetic engineering techniques, Medzhitov’s team has removed the animals’ ability to make IgE. They can’t get allergies. > The animals may be spared the misery of hay fever caused by the ragweed pollen that will inevitably drift into their box on currents of air. But Medzhitov predicts they will be worse off for it. Unable to fight the pollen and other allergens, they will let these toxic molecules pass into their bodies, where they will damage organs and tissues. > “It’s never been done before, so we don’t know what the consequences will be,” says Medzhitov. But if his theory is right, the experiment will reveal the invisible shield that allergies provide us.
- Cthulhu_ 10y ago
  It's a shame the article doesn't have the info on what happens without the allergy response, it needs a follow-up on that one.
  - smithkl42 10y ago
    Agreed. It really left me wondering, "Am I hurting myself by taking all that Claritin and NasalCort and NasalCrom and all those other anti-allergy meds that have made life livable again?"
Nilzor 10y ago
Does he elaborate on what kind of noxious chemicals, and how that explains why allergy has been on the rise in the 20th century? (I skimmed the article but couldn't find it)
- VLM 10y ago
  chems: No. He makes the semi-funny mistake of listing "gold allergy" and nickel allergy as if they're separate. Nickel is a component of low purity gold and that's why people who are allergic to nickel are allergic to low purity gold. The gold atoms are quite blameless, they're just in a bad neighborhood. Kinda like the gluten free guy isn't allergic to 100 individual types of pasta, he's actually allergic to one specific wheat protein, that happens to be in 100 pastas and breads and beer and who knows what else. Why: Kinda. Paraphrasing the article its a mishmash of the establishment view is it was an evolutionary adaptation that was a net gain until recent civil engineering, and now is a net loss. The mash of the mish is fairly standard inflammation and chronic exposure to a very large and complicated semi-autonomous set of analog systems combined with very close monitoring of a very large populations means all the weird system crashes where balances go haywire will be documented. So something like eating a peanut in 1700 was OK because your fish diet was clean and the person who died from a peanut was not noticed compared to the bodies stacked like cordwood due to cholera and typhoid and the plague and lack of clean water in general and intestinal parasites and food poisoning. But in 2016 dude eats a fish diet which is contaminated by mercury from coal burning power plants and that combined with low level exposure to a zillion things simultaneously that we know are bad at high level which means his immune system is perma-inflamed into being half way to blowing up all the time, and when he eats a peanut and dies people notice because in 2016, at least in the west, civil engineering means people are not dying of plagues all the time, so it gets documented and wondered about. Some aspects of the article are not controversial. Consider the accepted establishment theory of epoxy, urethane, or polyester monomer sensitization. The controversy is you have an enormously large complicated system (like physics, or the entire immune system vs the entire planetary industrial era environment) and fans of various gross simplifications and rules of thumb love to argue about which is righter than the other and the borders of acceptable application of those simplifications.
Yhippa 10y ago
I humbly request "ph0rque as a Service" for all longform articles on the Internet. I read through 60% of this thing and couldn't fully put together what it was about.
- ph0rque 10y ago
  You flatter me! I humbly suggest a learning algorithm might be a better summarizing service. I've noticed some bots on reddit trying to summarize articles.
sosborn 10y ago
> In the industrialized world, where such infections are rare, this system reacts in an exaggerated fashion to harmless targets, making us miserable in the process. Are you talking about the TSA?
TulliusCicero 10y ago
> Allergies are not simply a biological blunder. Instead, they’re an essential defense against noxious chemicals–a defence that has served our ancestors for tens of millions of years and continues to do so today. It sounds like they're still a blunder of some sort though, I somehow doubt that people allergic to tree pollen in the spring would actually be harmed if they lost their allergic reaction. I mean, we actually have that, in the form of allergy shots/sublinguals that make people lose that reaction, and those people are fine.
- jeffdavis 10y ago
  More to the point: if a few molecules of something cause your body to asphyxiate itself, it's hard not to call that a biological blunder. Maybe there's more to the story, but it's not a matter-of-fact simple defense against peanuts.
kpil 10y ago
There seems to be other theories similar to this, saying that our immune systems are subjected to too few pathogens in general, not just worms - due to the cleanliness of 'modern' life. There might even be some correlation to increased rates of allergy in countries that raised the living standard and less allergies among farmers (supposedly because they roll around in pigs shit? The reasoning is a bit unclear.) But I can't shake the feeling that there is something wrong with that theory. If you disregard large cities, 150 years ago, most people met very few people. Travelling was complicated and slow. Diseases was spreading of course, but decidedly in a slower pace than today - in most parts of the world. I'm fairly sure that an average person 150 years ago came in contact with less people in a year than I pass by on my daily commute. Heck, the building I work in has 3500 people in it, my kids go to three different schools with a couple of hundred other kids in each and their parents most likely works in other large workplaces, and I eat at restaurants that serves hundreds of meals every day. Is it not possible that an average person today are subjected to many -more- strains and variants of pathogens than ever. Maybe it is the increased load of _different_ pathogens that stresses the immune system? I mean, even if I moved in into the pigsty for good, it's just me and the pig there... The only way to catch a new disease would be from birds and rats, or a random mutation.

Aelinsaar 10y ago

I think the "It's a blunder" view is simplistic, but so is, "It's wonderfully adaptive!" I think like the sensation of pain, or itch, it can be both. When it's working well, in moderation, and your environment is stable, you're going to be ok. If one of those elements goes awry, then bang. Being slightly allergic to something noxious makes sense, but being violently, potentially fatally allergic to a foodstuff? No...

nxzero 10y ago

Reminds me how if you ask someone why something is and they lack the knowledge to know why, they'll still try to give an answer based on what they do know. We may never know why people have allergies.

aaron695 10y ago

Not sure is this article mentioned it, but from another one "As for why allergies are seemingly on the rise, this work does nothing to dispel or support the so-called hygiene hypothesis, which links allergies to modern hyperclean environments. With the advent of clean water and childhoods devoid of consuming much dirt (and the millions of bacteria and viruses that come with them) the immune system does not receive the early training it needs to function correctly, the hypothesis says. A healthy exposure to those invaders leads the body to invest more in type 1 responses, including strong microbe defense, rather than type 2 reactions such as allergies."

lordnacho 10y ago
Sounds like an opening for a new type of vaccine?
- criddell 10y ago
  Can a doctor write a prescription to allow a kid to play in the mud?
  - lordnacho 10y ago
    I've heard of doctors telling people to drink Guinness.
    - criddell 10y ago
      Ah right. I forgot that someone with a PhD in history is also a doctor.
zbjornson 10y ago
This part wasn't totally clear, but I think he's actually proposing that we're now launching allergic responses to harmful chemicals present in our Westernized indoor environments (wayyy down the article). If that's what he indeed means, then it goes against the hyperclean theory.

robertelder 10y ago

Here is a fairly recent and interesting documentary on allergies: http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episodes/the-allergy-fix http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episodes/the-allergy-fix Parasitic worms, and their modulation of the immune system (and the possible faulty human over-compensation for this) are one of a few different theories that are put forward. I thought I would link it here because it's fairly informative.

lossolo 10y ago

I do not have any allergies, i was born in summer and was on fresh air a lot. I have friends that were born in summer also but they were in house mostly and those that were born in winter and they both have allergies. Lately i have read scientific paper about statistically bigger amount of people with allergies that didn't born in summer. So make your kid touch the mud and ground, make it breath the air as much as he can while he is little. It's all about environment and contact with it.. IF the kid is under "parents bubble" when he is young it's not healthy for it. Link: https://theconversation.com/your-season-of-birth-is-stamped-on-your-dna-and-can-affect-your-risk-of-allergies-56751 https://theconversation.com/your-season-of-birth-is-stamped-...

1_player 10y ago
You're probably being downvoted (I did upvote by mistake...) because the theory that being born in summer helps with allergies smells like BS. One thing I agree with, though, with no other data point than my experience, is that being in contact with allergens at a young age helps, or conversely that kids raised in sterile environments are more prone to allergies and have a weaker immune system. I'm born in winter, my siblings as well, we were raised in the country, had dogs/cats, didn't live in a very clean house and haven't found anything we're allergic to and get very rarely sick. But yeah, N=1
- jrapdx3 10y ago
  I can see why you might say it "smells like BS", but it's not entirely implausible. The parent referred to 2 elements: summertime birth, and "playing in the mud", both contrasted to being confined to indoor environment. "Born in summer" implies greater exposure to sunlight (in northerly latitudes) vs. winter birth. Sunlight induces vitamin D formation in the skin. Vitamin D is implicated in normal immune system development so low D levels in infancy could conceivably be a factor in later development of allergies, etc. "Playing in mud" suggests contact with organisms present in the natural environment. Deprivation of this exposure has been discussed (here on HN a few days ago) as the "old friends hypothesis". Basically the idea is that through evolution our immune system "outsourced" certain functions to co-evolving microorganisms. When contact with these "friends" is lacking our immune systems are compromised and abnormal hypersensitivities develop.

libeclipse 10y ago

How does this explain why only some people are affected by allergies. If it's a defensive mechanism, shouldn't we all have it?

jernfrost 10y ago
From my scanning of the article my understanding is that we all have it. The difference is our magnitude of response. One made animals with no allergic reaction whatsoever and predicted that these would suffer other problems over time.
maxerickson 10y ago
Allergy symptoms can just be poor mediation of the defensive response.
PeterisP 10y ago
We all have this defensive mechanism, however, when it misfires (triggers in a situation where the response isn't necessary) then we call it an allergy.
- libeclipse 10y ago
  That's not what the article suggests. It suggests that allergies are not a misfiring but rather a real and proper defense against the allergens.
danharaj 10y ago
The same reason why we aren't clones of our parents.
fuzzfactor 10y ago
There is always the possibility that some of our ancestors spent thousands of years so far north that they didn't have significant pollen & pollinating insects, or fruits, vegetables, legumes and the kinds of irritating things most other cultures evolved in harmony with during recent millennia. Always did seem normal to be irritated by irritants, with some people more irritated than others by different things. Seems like each person can only handle a certain amount of total irritants before they experience discomfort. I remember intentionally overcoming an allergy to cats. Researchers have since indicated that the suspected irritant is the cat's saliva rather than just the hair itself. Regardless, it was not unexpected to become more sensitive to less-often-encountered things completely unrelated to animal hair or saliva as a tradeoff after reducing the feline sensitivity.

venomsnake 10y ago

I grew up in Eastern Europe (born in the early 80s). In my cohort hay fever allergies are extremely rare and food ones are unheard of. In the recent generations there are definitely more of them. EE was notoriously lax with pollution and industrial waste. So I think that toxins are not to be blamed. The sterility hypothesis seems like a better explanation.

LionessLover 10y ago
That would depend on the kind of toxins, not just "toxins". Also, nothing works in isolation: Maybe living in the East (I'm from the East too) had other - mitigating - advantages. Whet we are looking at is what to an account would be just the final "net income" number - but behind 10 cents there can be a multibillion dollar business or a teenager who spent most of his/her pocket money. So I don't think it can be decided so easily. Do you think the people thinking about this are not aware of global statistics and did not consider simple explanations?
babuskov 10y ago
I don't know about food allergies, but for hay fever I think the allergies were there before - people weren't educated enough to recognize the symptoms. My father (born in 1948) got fed with anti-biotics for the first 40 years of his life until one day he was lucky enough that a new local physician arrived who had allergy problems himself and changed the therapy. I was born in 1977, and also remember all the anti-biotics injections I got as a child until they finally tested me for allergies at the age of 12. I'd say the majority of medical doctors in this area got aware on allergies in early 90's.
scotty79 10y ago
EE back then had very few cars so probably air pollution wasn't as bad as in modern EE cities.

2skep 10y ago

This article is a very good example of the genre of science reporting I find very uninteresting and even boring. The way the writer builds up to the punch line by weaving in his own life and by overemphasiaing the trope of the 'maverick scientist challenging group think' is so contrived that it probably wrote itself. Maybe I am different that I want to read science articles to learn new things and not to be entertained. The writer proves how hard it is to do both.

wmeredith 10y ago
I read pieces like this and I can't help but think that the writer is creating prose, and I want reporting. one of us is in the wrong place.
pantulis 10y ago
The article is basically unreadable in today's attention economy.
allengeorge 10y ago
Let me counter: I found the article very readable, engaging and informative. There's a lot of context in there that the top-rated summary above misses (who the researcher is, and what he's worked on, how allergy theories have changed over the years...) It would have helped to have an abstract, but that's not a failure of the article itself.

csours 10y ago

After all the build-up, this guy's theory doesn't sound new at all... Am I missing something?

antisthenes 10y ago
Not at all. I've heard this exact theory from relatives back in the 90's when I asked them why people get allergies (as a kid).

jernfrost 10y ago

Ok, I scanned through quickly, but here is the conclusions as far as I can tell. Allergies has an important function. The problem is the severity of it. A weak allergic reaction is what protects us from toxins, viruses etc, however for some reason the system goes in overdrive in some people and that is not good. It might seem like there is no significant difference between this an previous understanding. But the significance as far as I can tell is that previously we thought all allergic reactions no matter how small was useless and wrong by the body. The idea was that any allergic reaction is a misfiring, while this idea suggests it isn't firing which is the problem it is the magnitude which is the problem.

rglullis 10y ago
From TFA: But understanding the purpose of allergies could lead to dramatic changes in how they’re treated. “One implication of our view is that any attempt to completely block allergic defences would be a bad idea,” he said. Instead, allergists should be learning why a minority of people turn a protective response into a hypersensitive one. “It’s the same as with pain,” said Medzhitov. “No pain at all is deadly; normal pain is good; too much pain is bad.”

nathan_long 10y ago

Skipping. I'm basically done reading controversial new medical theories and things that "a new study suggests." I'm not a researcher. Wait until the finding has been confirmed in lots of studies and is Boring Standard Medical Knowledge, then tell me. Until then, it's just going to give me the illusion of knowledge. There's so much "MAYBE eating kelp will reduce your risk of LUPUS!" that we lose sight of "I should really exercise more."

nkrisc 10y ago
That's not at all what this is. It introduces another theory and explains the thinking behind it. At no point does it state any sort of bunk, "do X to fix Y."
55555 10y ago
As someone who has literally done the treatment the article discusses, I think your prescription is best. I used to read all the cutting-edge research but now I try to mostly ignore headlines and research.

barkbro 10y ago

This would explain contact alleries to for example nickel and various chemicals, which are usually quite harmful, but I don't see how this would explain pollen and animal allergies. A lot of the pollens that cause allergy in some people are coming from harmless plants. And with pollen spreading in the wind, it would be an annoyance without necessarily protecting people much against coming in contact with the plants. Would avoiding contact with certain animals be beneficial? Other than avoiding pathogens, I don't see a lot of reasons to do so. Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if allergy, like many things in biology, are caused by multiple factors instead of just one.

fixermark 10y ago
If I'm understanding correctly, the overall hypothesis is that the allergy response is triggered by exposure to other toxins at low levels that prime the immune system to respond to the toxin, but the priming is inaccurate; the histamine-generating machinery does a quick-and-dirty approximation of the chemical that triggered the cellular damage, and while rounding up whatever industrial monomer irritated your nasal passages, it also snags the molecular tags of surrounding pollen and other common chemicals. As a side-effect, the system gets primed against the actual threat but also primed against benign foreign chemicals as well. The change in the ecosystem that has caused this defense mechanism to become a hindrance is the introduction of novel chemicals to our daily lives that trip low levels of immuno-response (or increase in chronic exposure to those chemicals due to a general shift to indoor living, where the chemicals just sit in the environment and bathe us in them), providing the opportunity for the immune system to sensitize to frequenltly-contacted benign chemicals.

chrisbennet 10y ago

Here's another example of science publication/publisher's drag on science (the paper that changed his life cost several months of his stipend): "As Medzhitov searched for papers on this subject, he came across references to a 1989 essay written by Charles Janeway, an immunologist at Yale, titled “Approaching the Asymptote? Evolution and revolution in immunology.” Medzhitov was intrigued and used several months’ of his stipend to buy a reprint of the paper. It was worth the wait, because the paper exposed him to Janeway’s theories, and those theories would change his life."

nycticorax 10y ago
That was in the early 90's, when most papers were still distributed as, well, paper. Back then, someone had to build and run an actual printing press.

sophacles 10y ago

Perhaps someone here is more versed in the field and can help me understand something... It seems like the "parasite" theory is a more specific example of the "fast reaction to toxins" theory being presented. Are there bigger differences that I'm not understanding, or is the resistance to the idea just that the new theory is overgeneralizing?

tmaly 10y ago

I found out about my daughters egg allergy while traveling abroad. I have my own suspicion that it was the result of her having antibiotics when she was a baby. A blocked tear duct was causing an infection in her eye. Her pediatrician prescribed antibiotics. When we eventually were able to get an appointment with an eye specialist, she recommended just wiping the eye out with mild soap. I have seen a few articles posted on HN that talked about the lack of gut bacteria ( killed by antibiotics ) as the reason why children develop allergies.

Cthulhu_ 10y ago
I've read other ones about the lack of breastfeeding at a young age; that might actually also be related to the development of gut bacteria. Now I wonder if breast milk is sterile or not (or contains spores); pretty sure formula milk is / should be.
outworlder 10y ago
Could be. As a counterpoint, I've had a lot of antibiotics early in life. The kind that caused tooth damage (most of my dental fillings are form that). Not as young, though. I had asthma triggered by dust, very frequently. We had an inhaler at home plus asthma medications. My brother and sister had the same issue, but they had no antibiotics prior to their symptoms. As adults, we have no known allergies. Your antibiotics are probably unrelated. Also, if the gut was severely affected by the antibiotics prescribed for the eye condition, you should have seen major gastrointestinal problems. Did you?

jerryhuang100 10y ago

The view of hypersensitive allergic reactions as a hypersensitive home alarm system is very similar to the view in Chinese traditional medicine. In CT medicine, to fundamentally treat constitutions of such hypersensitive conditions, the treatment is more focus on long-term tuning / taming immune system, rather than just blocking the allergic defenses.

Nomentatus 10y ago

This isn't controversial at this point, it's becoming the consensus, and it isn't news. But it gives me a chance to say: if you have real "allergy" problems but test negative for histamine/IgE allergies, say on a skin test; look into MCAS. Fair warning, your allergist may very well never have heard of it - doctors are rarely paid to read. MCAS = Mast Cell Activation Syndrome MCAD (Mast Cell Activation Disorder) = MCAS or mastocytosis Great links here: http://strengthflexibilityhealtheds.com/2016/02/04/diagnosing-mast-cell-activation-syndrome-mcas-update-and-diagnosis-confirmation/ http://strengthflexibilityhealtheds.com/2016/02/04/diagnosin... http://www.mastattack.org/2014/10/mcad-general-information-public/ http://www.mastattack.org/2014/10/mcad-general-information-p... http://evilmastcells.com/ http://evilmastcells.com/ http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(14)02927-3/fulltext http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(14)02927-3/full... Dr. Anne Maitland’s presentation on Allergies & Mast Cell Activation Syndrome in EDS Patients. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktFdr-9rpIM&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktFdr-9rpIM&feature=youtu.be https://mastcellblog.wordpress.com/mastcellguide/ https://mastcellblog.wordpress.com/mastcellguide/

ejstronge 10y ago
Mastocytosis is exceedingly rare - an article in NEJM (one of the authoritative medical journals) estimates that 1 in 100,000 people have been diagnosed with the disease. If your primary care physician has 2,000 patients (not unreasonable), s/he could reasonably expect to never encounter the disorder outside of a textbook. Just as in programming, doctors avoid the 'premature optimization' - no need to test for a rare disorder until considerably more common ones, like allergies, are ruled out.

zbjornson 10y ago

For a comparatively concise viewpoint straight from Medzhitov's group, including much more context and scientific support, see: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(12)00820-2 http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(12)0... (free) This also spends more time discussing what only appears in the last few paragraphs above the "*" in the OP, regarding Westernization efects and what I think are the more controversial aspects.

hellbanner 10y ago

If you think you may have parasites, check out http://humaworm.com http://humaworm.com and the related herb remedies

rhexs 10y ago
If you think you may have parasites, perhaps consider going to a real doctor.
- ArtDev 10y ago
  Its a funny thing but the "natural" remedy can actually work better. I put natural in quotations because its super toxic! Wormwood/nutmeg/Black Walnut. Nasty stuff. Its good as a last resort if the conventional stuff does not kill the parasites This is what happened to me.
  - askldfhjkasfhd 10y ago
    I would argue that ingesting something that's super toxic is not a better solution, and is part of the reason why naturopathic remedies are not a good idea to self-appy.
    - hellbanner 10y ago
      "Antibiotics" literally translates to anti-living, if my language knowledge is correct..
  - hellbanner 10y ago
    Thanks for sharing. I put links to a few university research in the above post hoping the parent can see from a "real" perspective.
- hellbanner 10y ago
  http://www.uofmhealth.org/health-library/hn-2187003 http://www.uofmhealth.org/health-library/hn-2187003 "The juice of freshly macerated unripe hulls of the black walnut (Juglans nigra) has been used for many years in folk medicine as a treatment for localized, topical fungal infections such as ringworm." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ptr.2650040104/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ptr.2650040104/ab... "Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans Houtt.) is the seed kernel of inside the fruit. It has been studied to having number of ethnopharmacological properties. Essential oils are secondary metabolites which originated from different parts of plants and made up of volatile compounds. In the present study, the essential oil extracted from nutmeg was investigated for its in vitro cytotoxicity on Vero cell line (normal cell line) and anti-parasitic activity against Toxoplasma gondii parasite. Nutmeg essential oil showed very low cytotoxic activity against Vero cells with IC 50 value of 24.83µg/mL. In the in vitro anti-T.gondii assay, the oil extract showed significant inhibiting activity with EC 50 value of 24.45µg/mL. This result was comparable to the standard drug clindamycin (EC 50 =16.57µg/mL.). Based on the promising results, nutmeg essential oil may be further studied for its mechanism of action against T.gondii and to isolate the bioactive compound(s) to treat toxoplasmosis." https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236031031_Anti-Parasitic_Activity_of_Myristica_Fragrans_Houtt_Essential_Oil_Against_Toxoplasma_Gondii_Parasite https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236031031_Anti-Para... -- I found these within 5 minutes of googling.

Jacksonb 10y ago

Good complimentary paper. "Impact of Pollen on Human Health: More Than Allergen Carriers?" https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/doc/1218587/1218587.pdf https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/doc/1218587/1218587.pdf

hackney 10y ago

It has been stated that kids who grow up in and around forested natural areas have better immune systems and are generally healthier for having grown up closer to the natural earth, as opposed to growing up in an asphalt jungle. Take poison oak for example. I have a relative whos drinking water flows through these plants and he is now immune to it. I brought a friend to his house (never been exposed) and after sitting on his couch, within 24 hours I had to take them to the hospital over the poison oak which had spread to the majority of their body. They were given a shot and we left shortly after that. Me? I've had allergies from a young age and actually had treatments for it. I remember laying on my stomache while the doctor pricked my back a bunch of times. I'll still sneeze around a bunch of pollen but not enough to prevent me from doing the work. In short, I do not think there is a fixall, take a pill solution and that there are many many factors to consider when treating someone for an allergy, or anything else for that matter. My grandma was hospitalized from inhaling bat dung, and my father also after eating some peanuts. Both could probably be treated to be less allergic but, this would require a lengthy treatment plan which is not a normal solution.

wyck 10y ago

They should do some research on tree pollen and why my body thinks trees are trying to kill me.

beefman 10y ago

Original source: http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-do-we-have-allergies http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-do-we-have-allergies

dang 10y ago
Ok, we changed to that from http://qz.com/689806/a-controversial-theory-may-explain-the-real-reason-humans-have-allergies/ http://qz.com/689806/a-controversial-theory-may-explain-the-....

bokglobule 10y ago

FWIW, I was able to clear up my spring time pollen allergies by not eating gluten. I was tested for celiac disease, but I do not have it thankfully. However, I decided to stop eating wheat in early 2015 for other reasons. I noticed that when spring came, I had almost no issues with pollen. I mentioned it to my internist and he said he wasn't surprised given the typical immune reaction to gluten. This year, another repeat performance. Almost no problems with pollen season. I had one or two episodes where I sneezed, but that was it. My area of the US is one of the highest allergy areas due to the density of foliage. As to why this has happened, I can only speculate. I suspect that it's mostly due to the fact that the wheat we eat in the U.S. isn't the same wheat we ate 40+ years ago- it's been genetically altered and there are NO long term studies on the affect of these GMOs on health - they haven't been available on the market long enough to really know. I haven't tried eating non-GMO wheat products so I can't say whether my theory is correct. For me, not eating wheat was the way to go for better health overall. But.. I do miss eating warm bread from the oven now and then.

partiallypro 10y ago
None of what you said is backed by science, and people had allergies long before GMO crops ever existed. There have been tons of studies on GMO crops, long term and short term effects and there has been no link between them and anything even as nuanced as allergies. Every time people speak out against GMO crops, they are following their own faith instead of science. Golden rice could have saved hundreds of thousands of people from death or malnutrition, but those people died because of people that spout this nonsense.
- nashashmi 10y ago
  > None of what you said is backed by science, There is nothing out there to disprove what people fearfully claim either. The long term effects on a large were never tested, and it is being tested while in production. Unfortunately, there is no control case to compare against. >and people had allergies long before GMO crops ever existed. Sure there were people with allergies long before GMOs but they were in smaller numbers. There has been a growing trend of abnormalities and scientists cannot understand why. GMOs cannot be ruled out.

outworlder 10y ago

If allergies are protective, what happens to people who take anti-allergy medication? Say, during pollen season? Are they being harmed?

scotty79 10y ago
That would depend on whether those medications only reduce strong allergic reaction or reduce all allergic reactions, even small ones.

ArtDev 10y ago

I wonder if having worms as a kid (I was an expat kid in Nepal) provides some kind of protection against allergies as an adult? I have never had any allergies and I think this may be the reason (both my parents have seasonal allergies).

nkrisc 10y ago

I'm still left wondering what this means for the fact some people are allergic to things that others are not. Is it just genetics? My sister is allergic to penicillin, onions, and mushrooms while I'm not allergic to anything I've yet encountered. Did I just get lucky (or, maybe unlucky) and inherit different genes from our parents? Does environment play a role?

Pyxl101 10y ago

Do you know what part stood out the most to me? His difficulty getting access to scientific papers: > Graduate school wasn’t much better. Medzhitov arrived at Moscow State University just as the Soviet regime collapsed. The university was broke, and Medzhitov didn’t have the equipment he needed to run experiments. “I was basically spending all of my time reading and thinking,” Medzhitov told me. > Mostly, he thought about how our bodies perceive the outside world. We can recognise patterns of photons with our eyes and patterns of air vibrations with our ears. To Medzhitov, the immune system was another pattern recognition system – one that detected molecular signatures instead of light or sound. > As Medzhitov searched for papers on this subject, he came across references to a 1989 essay written by Charles Janeway, an immunologist at Yale, titled ‘Approaching the Asymptote? Evolution and revolution in immunology’. Medzhitov was intrigued and used several months’ of his stipend to buy a reprint of the paper. It was worth the wait, because the paper exposed him to Janeway’s theories, and those theories would change his life. Several months of stipend to buy a single paper?

pg_is_a_butt 10y ago

"we" don't have allergies. you ninny sissies who jump at shadows have allergies, because you are ninny sissies who jump at shadows.

unusximmortalis 10y ago

unless our health is damaged by an external factor (a hammer, a bigger hammer, you get the point) all diseases are internal reactions of our bodies (caused by outside or inside interactions) which unbalance our whole being and eventually can kill us if we do not restore the balance in timely manner.

gumby 10y ago

To me the most interesting part of allergies is not addressed by this article, except by referring to its absence: > Instead, allergists should be learning why a minority of people turn a protective response into a hypersensitive one. “It’s the same as with pain,” said Medzhitov. “No pain at all is deadly; normal pain is good; too much pain is bad.” It's clear that there's a process, presumably a good one, that sometimes goes haywire, and really that's all most people care about.